Fiona Smyth

I started out frustrated with the narrator, the artwork, and the flow of this graphic novel. However, the storyline made me read on and I was satisfied with an interesting conclusion to a unique story. I liked the apocalyptic scenario and future world that was created. I was not a fan of an alien narrator telling the story as a history lesson. The artwork was loose and organic, which made it a bit hard to follow from panel to panel. Overall, if you are hesitant with the story, stick with it show more because there is some interesting social commentary on cloning, which may have you thinking about your opinion. show less

What I appreciate so much about this lovely book is that it touches on subjects that I find myself handling right now as they come up--for example, gender roles, the presence and validity of the LGBT people in our communities, the fact that relationships can be with men or women or individuals who don't identify as either. What's wonderful about kids growing up at this time is that this information is not shocking or hard to understand. I feel intensely grateful that I live at a time, and in show more a place, where the concept of gay or lesbian relationships do not strike my child as strange. In fact, what confuses him is that there are still many people who find them not only strange, but troubling, and want to prevent people who love each other from creating legally recognized partnerships.

I'm being far more specific and preachy about this topic than this book does--in fact, it's really a gentle breeze that runs through the book. Other topics broached, and again, with a very light touch, are crushes/relationships, "secret touching" (used to be called good touch/bad touch), masturbation, words associated with sex, and so on. It utilizes four "characters" who represent fairly fluid categories of individuals: for the most part, their sexuality is ambiguous.

I do wish there had been more specificity. There was no discussion of the mechanics of sex, nor was there any discussion of "sex words" beyond the word "sexy." There was some discussion of sexual organs (described in this book as "middle parts," which I thought was nice--any part of the body can be private, the author argues), but nothing clinical. The illustrations served to show that body parts can look markedly different from person to person, from age to age, which actually can come as a surprise in this time of standardized and totally unachieveable standards of beauty. My son and I laughed at several of the illustrated scenes, and we found the use of question marks and exclamation marks to convey a character's sense of befuddlement or shock really endearing. This book doesn't really explain what sex is, but it provides parents a really low-key way to reinforce the ideas of trust, justice, joy, and respect in the context of all kinds of relationships, sexual and otherwise, as well as an easy way to introduce LGBT "acceptance" or "understanding," which is still in short supply. show less

This was great. Covered just about all the sex topics that my kid (7yo) was coming up with plus a few that I thought were important.

Parent Advisory: If you get this book (or any other sex-ed book) for your kid, be sure that you tell your kid not to take it to school and show it to a bunch of other second graders in the after-school program, because although this book is completely age-appropriate, and the kids themselves will be cool with it because they are super curious, the parents might show more not be ready to go there yet, and then you will have to have uncomfortable conversations with parents. show less

This was great. Covered just about all the sex topics that my kid (7yo) was coming up with plus a few that I thought were important. [return][return]Parent Advisory: If you get this book (or any other sex-ed book) for your kid, be sure that you tell your kid not to take it to school and show it to a bunch of other second graders in the after-school program, because although this book is completely age-appropriate, and the kids themselves will be cool with it because they are super curious, show more the parents might not be ready to go there yet, and then you will have to have uncomfortable conversations with parents. show less